


Why Does My Heart (feel so sad)

by Michelle



Category: Shadowhunters (TV), The Shadowhunter Chronicles - All Media Types
Genre: Amnesia, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Episode 03.22, Episode Fix-it, F/M, Fix-It, Grief/Mourning, Happy Ending, Jace Wayland Deserves Nice Things, Memory Loss, POV Alternating, POV Clary Fray, POV Jace Wayland, Post-Episode: s03e22 All Good Things..., Post-Season/Series Finale, Recovered Memories, Sad with a Happy Ending, Season 3 Finale, clace
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-13
Updated: 2021-03-13
Packaged: 2021-03-21 06:13:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,090
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30017364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Michelle/pseuds/Michelle
Summary: How does it feel to lose your memories? How does it feel to lose the love of your life? A story in three parts, with a happy ending. Because Clary and Jace deserve one.
Relationships: Clary Fray/Jace Wayland
Comments: 4
Kudos: 9





	Why Does My Heart (feel so sad)

**Author's Note:**

> Title: Why Does My Heart (feel so sad)  
> Author: Michelle  
> Email: michelle [at] waking-vision.com  
> Beta: None, been out of the game for too long.  
> Summary: How does it feel to lose your memories? How does it feel to lose the love of your life? A story in three parts, with a happy ending. Because Clary and Jace deserve one.  
> Pairing: Clace  
> Genre: angst, romance, fix-it  
> Warnings: Angst. Is that a bad thing, though?  
> Rating: T  
> Disclaimer: The Shadowhunters belong to Cassandra Clare and Freeform. Title hints at the Moby song.  
> Author’s Note: I guess everyone and their cousin have written a fix-it for 3.22. Here is my take on it, not necessarily because the world needed one more fanfic, but because I needed it. The ending of this show left me a sobbing wreck and after a ten year fanfic abstinence I had to sit down and write my version, or else. Feedback is very much appreciated.

_I cannot wait, been long enough / Still burning for you / When will I be forever locked / Inside of your heart_ (Amaranthe)

I  
-Clary-

Clary wakes from something that has not been sleep. It cannot have been, because she is not in a bed. She does not know what she has been doing before waking up, before coming into being here and now. Wherever here is, wherever now is. She turns her head, looks around, and starts shivering violently. Something is very, very wrong.

She doesn’t remember how she got here. There are trees and lawns and flowerbeds everywhere. She is standing in the middle of the lawn, quite far from the nearest pathway, as if a spaceship has just dropped her off here. After wiping her memory, apparently.

She looks down at herself and notices her rather unordinary wardrobe. It’s not every day that she runs around in a dress like this and with stilettos that elevate her to normal-person-height. Not that she remembers even owning an outfit like this ... There is also the downside that it’s quite impossible to hide a wallet, a phone or even an ID on her body. No one to call, not even the money to pay for a cab. Her mom will kill her once she finds out she’s been wandering around New York at night alone in a slinky hooker dress.

~*~

It doesn’t come to that. A passerby calls the police, because apparently she looks even more confused than she feels (which is hardly possible in her opinion). And the police takes her to the hospital, because the cops think she might have been drugged and raped. She halfheartedly hopes that that might be the case, since it would be an explanation for her memory loss. However, the doctors find her to be healthy. There is not a single scratch on her skin, no trace of roofies in her body.

It is then that she learns how much time is actually missing from her memory. She’s in the system, the police tells her. She raises an eyebrow, not understanding what that is supposed to mean. And then the detective explains that her mom’s apartment burnt down and that both she and her mom have been missing since then.

„When was that?“ Clary asks, trepidation in her voice.

„Last summer.“

She has to ask for the current date, because she doesn’t even know what weekday it is. And the answer is like a fist to the gut. There’s not much talking to her after that for a while.

~*~

The police leaves her be and sends a psychiatrist instead. She’s a nice enough woman, but Clary cannot stand her helpful and understanding attitude. She wants someone to do something, to put her life back into place with a magic wand or the right entry into a computer program. Instead she talks and takes her hand and looks concerned. And that doesn’t change anything about Clary’s situation.

She learns a lot about amnesia, though. The psychiatrist assumes some kind of trauma, but what that might have been, she cannot guess. Clary cannot guess either, because she is the one with the amnesia after all.

„What is the last thing you remember?“ Saying bye to her mom and leaving the apartment.

„Where did you go?“ No idea.

„Did you meet with someone?“ Just a blank.

„Maybe you had a boyfriend your mom didn’t approve of and you wanted to meet him?“ That seems highly unlikely to her. So she just shrugs.

„For how much longer do we have to do this?“ Clary asks.

The psychiatrist looks thoughtful. „Well, nothing is physically wrong with you, Clary. There is no reason to keep you in the hospital. Normally I would send you home to your family and hope for your memories to return on their own. Being surrounded by familiar things, hoping to trigger a memory, promises the most success for victims of amnesia. However, for obvious reasons that is not an option in your case."

Clary thinks of Luke. Maybe she could live with him?

The psychiatrist writes down Lukes name and says: „I’ll ask around.“

~*~

Eventually the cop comes back to tell her that Luke has left the police and no one knows where he is. „Vanished off the face of the earth“, are the words the man uses. He looks at his feet while he’s telling Clary all this. And how would she like attenting the Brooklyn Academy of Arts and move into a dorm room?

What is she supposed to say to this?

_I just want to go home._ But there is no home anymore.

_I just want my mom._ But her mom is missing, most likely dead.

_I just want things to be the way they were._

In the end, she forces a smile on her face and says, that would be wonderful. A dream come true.

It seems that the cop has pulled some strings, because suddenly she is enrolled at university, has a small scholarship, a dorm room and a modest life set up for her. The Academy goes to great lengths to make her feel welcome and help her in every way possible. Still, she takes two jobs to pay for the room and food and whatever else she needs. Her mom’s insurance gives her the silent treatment, because her mom hasn’t been proclaimed dead. And Clary’s own little savings’ account is woefully inadequate for living on one’s own. And even that is only after she has all her papers in order to prove that she is indeed herself, Clary Fray.

~*~

For a while there, she ponders leaving the school and New York altogether. She doesn’t feel like she can paint and draw anymore, doesn’t know what to put on paper anyway. And maybe it would be better to start fresh somewhere else. Pretend that she’s finished school and moved elsewhere to work or study. Maybe that missing time and all the missing people in her life wouldn’t hurt as much then as they do now.

In the end, she can’t bring herself to do that. Somewhere in New York her memories are hidden. Somewhere in those streets and cafés and apartments her life must have happened. And if she could just find the right trigger – the right person or the right spot – maybe she could find her past as well.

She starts at her mom’s apartment, lingers in the street outside, looks longingly at the windows where other people are living now. Everything from her life there is lost: The albums with childhood pictures. Her clothes and her books. Her mom’s paintings and of course her own sketchbooks. All gone forever. There seems to be no connection between herself and that apartment anymore, no secrets it could tell her, so she leaves with a heavy heart.

She goes on by visiting her old haunts. Cafés she visited with Simon. Her school. The cinema they used to go to. Nothing triggers anything. Not sure where to go from here, she starts to just wander around the city aimlessly. Sometimes during the day and sometimes in the middle of the night she hops onto a bus or a subway and gets off at a random place, hoping this might be the moment when a memory will come to her.

It never does. Sometimes she has vague feelings of familiarity and more often than not she cannot shake the feeling that she is being followed, but she can never make out a face in the crowd. And weirdly enough she never feels threatened by that thought. Sometimes she thinks she is hearing footsteps behind her when no one is there. And sometimes she senses someone brushing past her and the smell of soap and fresh laundry lingers. Maybe it is her own guardian angel making sure she doesn’t get robbed in a dark alley. Then again, if angels exist, why does she have to suffer the way she is suffering?

~*~

Once she takes up her walks through the city, her inspiration comes back. Suddenly she can paint again, but it’s nothing like before. Her drawings and sketches had been her diary, her form of making sense of the world around her. In her old life, she drew what she knew and what she saw: Portraits of friends and family, scenery, the view out of her window. Realistic stuff, normal stuff. Now, however, no faces pop up in her mind that she absolutely has to draw. When she takes a brush or a pencil and closes her eyes, she sees wildly swirling colours, lines that intertwine, weird shapes and blotches of sunshine that seem to come from some unconscious part of her brain. And so she paints that, even though she has no idea what it might mean. Sometimes she feels like she can almost see shapes or faces in those paintings, but when she blinks, they’re gone a again. It’s a bit like those 3D picture-books where you’re supposed to see a dolphin or a tree after staring at it for ten minutes, but most of the time you see nothing at all and the concentration just makes your eyes water. This is what she feels when she paints, but her tutors seem to like it. And that is enough for her. It gives purpose to an existence that feels absolutely adrift.

This is how she spends the year: Painting and walking and searching and agonizing over that big chunk of her life that is missing. It feels like a gaping wound that doesn’t bleed. It hurts though, all the time. The ache is in the back of her mind even when she is not consciously thinking about it. She dreads the possibility that it might be her partner for the rest of her life. And she feels how that void is spreading and wrapping her up in a cold embrace once the anniversary of her memory loss looms on the horizon.

The Academy is holding a small and intimate vernissage on exactly that day and they want her to show some of her stuff together with other students. It’s a big opportunity, but she is hesitant at first, because she had wanted to spend that particular day in bed crying her heart out. But then she decides that maybe it’s a blessing to have a distraction. And dammit, one year later she should really be able to come to terms with things.

She is actually able to hold on to that attitude until _he_ shows up at the gallery. She almost doesn’t notice him when she scans the crowd, because he’s so still and unmoving in that corner of his. And yet she sees him staring at her and something tugs wildly at her heart. This. This is what she has been waiting for. This stranger, tall and lean, blond and with an intense stare in her direction, is someone from the past she can’t remember. She is sure of it, even if she can’t be sure of anything else.

He looks startled when he realizes she is returning his stare, like he didn’t expect to be picked out in the crowd, didn’t want to be seen at all. He turns and flees – there is no other word for it – and when she follows, the smell of soap and laundry is in her nose. Her heart skips a beat. It seems, she’s found her guardian angel.

II  
-Jace-

At first, no one even notices that Clary is gone. Jace thinks she’s with Simon. Simon thinks she’s with Jace. And no one can expect Alec or Magnus to think of anything but Alec and Magnus at that point. In the end it’s Izzy who scans the crowd and doesn’t spot Clary anywhere. From one end of the room to the other she mouthes Clary’s name to Jace and raises an eyebrow. He shrugs, not yet concerned, but when he looks around and can’t see her anywhere, he puts the rather unmanly flute of chapagne he’s been holding on a random surface, and goes to look for her.

She is nowhere to be found. Not in the kitchen, nor the training space or the weapons’ room. She’s also not in her room and when Jace opens to door to his own room and sees the letter propped neatly up on the desk, he knows immediately that someting is very wrong. He rushes in to get the letter, sits down and reads.

And then he doesn’t do anything for quite some time.

Izzy eventually finds him. He sits on his bed, stares holes into the air and holds Clary’s letter like he would drown if he let go. She sits down next to him, carefully puts a hand on his arm and tries to pick the letter from his vice-like grip. The moment he lets go of the paper, life seems to flood back into his body all at once. He takes a deep breath like he’s been underwater, tries to hold in a sob, fails and then just clings to Izzy for what feels like an eternity.

~*~

Over the next week there is a lot of debate between them. There must be something they can do, one says. No, it is the will of the Angel, the other replies. They have to accept his judgement, as Clary accepted his judgement, says Alec who has always been the voice of reason. They hover between feeling pity for her and being angry at her for not telling them beforehand what was going on. Sometimes, one of them goes through all of these warring emotions in one day, because that is what grief feels like.

They all fear that Jace might do something reckless and stupid, but he doesn’t. He moves among them like a ghost, silent and with his head bent. His body is tense, his eyes dark and shadowed and his face drawn. He knows that his family is unsure how to act around him, knows that they’re grieving too, but he can’t seem to snap out of it. And it’s a relief to at least know that no one expects him to.

They sit with him and include him whenever they feel he would be thankful for the gesture. And when he cannot stand anyone near him, they leave him alone. He’s eternally grateful to have these people around him. And that thought brings him right back to the knowledge that Clary has nobody in her life now.

~*~

He doesn’t know how he is expected to cope with this situation, so he just reverts back to his old life. Before he knew Clary, he was one of the best Shadowhunters alive, because he had nothing to lose. He went into a fight without fear of dying. He can do that again, now. Even worse, he kind of craves death, because he’s quite sure anything would be better than the limbo he is living in now.

He’s always the first to volunteer for a mission, always the first to go into a dark basement or a creepy alley. He’ll jump into the fray with a total disregard for danger, because he dares any demon to bring on a worse hell than the one he’s already living in. He knows intellectually that he tires Alec out who feels obligated to keep up. He also knows that this in turn worries Izzy half to death. He can’t do anything about that. He had two things in his life – his love for Clary and the hunt. He has lost Clary, he cannot lose the hunt. It’s the only thing left that gives him any sense of self.

They bring him home more dead than alive more times than any of them can count. Stab wounds, gunshot wounds, broken bones and demon venom are a regular occurence in his life nowadays. And then there is that memorable night when half a building collapses on top of him. He doesn’t care, is glad of the pain because it dulls that other pain at least until Izzy can put some runes on him. He sees that she’s worried her lower lip until it’s bloody and he supposes she’s debating with herself whether she should try and talk some sense into him.

„Don’t“, he says. And thankfully, she doesn’t. She turns around, away from him, and when she grabs for a potion or bandage or whatnot he can see her hands shake. He would love to comfort her, make her pain better. He knows that he’s not the only one hurting, not the only one missing Clary. But when he’s not able to make his own pain better, how can he have any hope of helping Izzy.

„Just don’t leave“, is what she settles for in the end. „I don’t think I could take it if I lost you too.“ And of course leaving doesn’t mean leaving – he’s not that stupid. She’s asking him not to die on her.

After he’s contemplated that very option for so long, it’s the hardest thing to say: „I won’t“, and mean it.

~*~

He spends a lot of his time in Clary’s room. He looks at her clothes, files through her notebooks, dusts off all the knick-knacks she salvaged from her mom’s apartment, just lies on her bed and stares at the ceiling. In the beginning, it’s the only way of feeling near to her. He knows that Magnus has drawn a few strings and put a few spells in the right places to set Clary up for her future life. He knows that Downworld won’t touch a hair on Clary’s head. He knows that Izzy and Alec have gone to check on her from afar. He cannot, at least not during the first weeks of her being gone. He cannot imagine her looking at him like a stranger. He’s pretty sure that’s the kind of pain that would break him after all.

But after the sharp pang of loss shapes into a deep, constant throbbing of sorrow, he decides he needs to see her. He decides he wants her in his life in whatever way possible. And if she doesn’t see him, because she’s a mundane now, and if he cannot tell her who she really is – so be it. He needs to see her face, needs to see for himself that she’s safe.

This is when he starts checking in on her. First, he just stands at the corner of her building like a stalker, waits for her to come and go, to catch a glimpse of her small and serious face. It’s rare now that he sees her laugh, and that makes everything even harder.

When she takes up her nightime walks through the city, he follows her whenever he can. Sometimes she enters a café and orders a drink. And when she sits alone at a table, her face thoughtful, he sits down across from her, and pretends they’re here together, sharing a cup of coffee and staring in companionable silence at the city outside. Other times she comes by a place they have been to together. Then she might stop, deep in thought as if she’s trying to catch a fleeting memory. But most of the time, she just passes by buildings and streets she knows from before. There’s no reaction from her when she walks by Hunter’s Moon, nothing on the corner where they killed a demon once, not even a twitch when she comes by the spot where the Owl pushed her from a rooftop.

She just doesn’t remember. But he does. He remembers for both of them, the good and the bad.

~*~

He can’t really put a finger on the moment when Simon became a friend. Maybe in another life they could have gotten along from the beginning, but with Clary standing between them both felt they had to be the bigger macho. Now, with Clary gone, they bond over the experience of their shared loss. It’s a weird basis for a friendship, but it’s a basis nonetheless. Simon knows Clary better than anyone, better even than Jace knows her. And he can listen to Simon tell him childhood stories of their exploits and adventures for hours.

Simon berates Jace again and again for following Clary around like a puppy. He says it’s like scratching the scab off a wound. It can never heal then. But what Simon doesn’t understand is that Jace doesn’t want to heal, he doesn’t want to feel better, he doesn’t want to let go. It would feel to him like he was betraying Clary. That she doesn’t remember him doesn’t mean that she’s not his responsibility anymore. And it certainly doesn’t mean that he doesn’t love her anymore. He’s promised her forever, and he’s going to keep that promise.

~*~

When the first anniversary of the Angel’s punishment comes around, his mood deteriorates again. He feels like he’s spent the last year stuck in limbo, not really dead, but certainly not very alive either. Sometimes he’s pretty sure he’s only still here, because he gave Izzy his word.

When he learns that Clary will have a gallery opening on that very day, he can almost call it karma. He knows how desperately she always wanted to be an artist, to be as good a painter as her mom. It had always been an integral part of her life – until she had seen Jace and Alec and Izzy at the Pandemonium and her life had taken a very different turn. She had still been drawing, of course. But her focus was on the hunt, was on finding her place among the Shadowhunters. It feels right that she should have her artistic aspirations back, when she has lost so many other things. She has paid dearly for her spot in that gallery, even if she doesn’t know it.

Of course he’s going to be there for this occasion. Even if every offspring of hell came at him – that wouldn’t stop him from seeing her come into her own. He takes good care of his Glamour, the way he always does when he goes after her. He slips into the gallery early in the evening, when the wine glasses are still all neatly in a row and the plates full of sandwiches are still that – full. He sees her standing next to her paintings, explaining to everyone who wants to hear who she is and what she’s doing. She looks genuinely happy, he thinks, for the first time in what seems like forever. He follows her with his eyes for hours and drinks in the sight of her talking and laughing and mingling.

What he doesn’t expect is that she is suddenly looking straight at him. He has gotten so used to watching her without being seen in return, that he can’t breathe for a moment. To have her look at him, see him instead of through him – it is like seeing her for the first time all over again. It is like falling in love with her all over again. He knows instantly that that one look from her will either get him through the years to come or it will ultimately break him.

He wants to keep looking at her, desperately. But her place isn’t in his world anymore. He doesn’t know what the Angel might do if he makes a move towards her. Will that infuriate him? Will he even care? And so he flees, like a thief in the night. But when he stands panting in the the street outside, his heart hammering madly in his chest, he knows instantly that she has followed him, even before she calls out to him.

„Yes, I’m Jace“, he answers her tentative question. And it feels as if the world rights itself.

III  
-Resolution-

The moment would forever be burned into his memory: How Clary had followed him outside, how she had looked at him the way only Clary had ever looked at him, how she had remembered his name. Jace had missed her this past year, of course, but only in this moment did he realize how much he had missed hearing his name being spoken in her voice. She had looked at him, her gaze full of wonder and surprise, had raised one delicate hand to gently touch one of the runes on his neck …

… and had fainted. He had been so shellshocked that he nearly hadn’t been quick enough to catch her. But when it became apparent that she wasn’t going to wake, he swept her up in his arms, marvelled at the fact that she fit into his embrace like she had been made specifically for him, and took her home. For a moment he considered returning her to her dorm room, but he was Nephilim. He lived in a world where magic and demons and angels were real. Jace believed in wonders, and he believed in signs. If the Angel didn’t want her to remember his name, she wouldn’t have. And that, in turn, meant that this moment, right here, was fated to be.

He decided to take the risk and bring her to the Institute. Her room was unchanged, as if it had waited for her return together with Jace. No one had dared move any of her stuff. And no one had seen the need either.

He placed Clary carefully on the bed, and decided to be half-daring in removing her shoes and her dress, but leaving her underwear on. For both of their sakes. In case she didn’t remember him after all, she probably wouldn’t thank him for ripping the clothes of her unconscious body. And in case she did remember him – well, she might not mind much then. He, on the other hand, didn’t think he could handle a naked Clary right about now. It was shocking enough to have her here, with him.

~*~

When Clary woke, she felt disoriented for a moment, but she knew instantly that something was profoundly different. She had gotten used to waking up and feeling like she was missing something vitally important. There was always the sense of a dream just lurking at the back of her mind that she couldn’t quite grasp.

Now though, she simply felt rested. Like all was good in the world and the possibilites were endless. She opened her eyes and couldn’t suppress a smile. She knew where she was: She was lying in her own bed at the Institute. And that fact made her just as thankful as the knowledge that she knew the room to be hers. The dreams that she had never quite been able to recall, here they were. All at once.

She turned her head and saw Jace sitting in an armchair next to her bed. He had tucked his long legs under himself and had a book in his lap. From the looks of it he hadn’t gotten far in it. His left hand held the book open, but he wasn’t reading. He must have fallen asleep some time during the night. The fringes of his golden hair fell into his eyes, seeming longer than the last time she had seen him. He looked peaceful. He looked like the person she loved most in the world.

She kept staring at him, drinking in every little detail about him: The voyance rune on his left hand, the woollen sweater she had never seen on him before, the long lashes that had always been a shade darker than his hair. His face seemed to be more angular, the cheekbones even more pronounced. The changes were subtle, and probably only stood out to her because she hadn’t seen him for one year.

_One fucking year._ She had to close her eyes for a moment and swallowed hard. All this wasted time, and yet she had to be thankful. When the Angel had warned her, there had not been a timestamp on her punishment. For her, the sentence had been forever and she had accepted that. To find that she had been forgiven was a blessing, even though she could feel knowledge still missing in the corners of her mind. She knew Jace, she knew where she was. However, she couldn’t recall how the building looked from the outside. Couldn’t recall how she had parted with Jace. What was the last thing she had said to him? Maybe it would come back to her and maybe it wouldn’t. Whatever might happen, she had her life back.

„Hey“, Jace said carefully, the word spoken so low that it couldn’t even be called a whisper. She must have been staring so long and hard at him that it had woken him.

She realized he must have taken quite the gamble in taking her here and she wanted to reassure him. There was only one word that would tell him what he needed to know – that she remembered: „Jace“, she said and smiled at him.

He let out a breath and returned her smile. She held out one hand to take his and they both discovered in wonder that one of her runes had reappeared during the night, a stark black mark on her forearm.

„Maybe the rest will come back, too?“ Jace asked, hopeful.

„Maybe“, she agreed. But whatever happened, it would be enough.

_~*~_

And again, it was Isabelle who eventually found them. She had gotten used to not seeing Jace at breakfast. Or lunch. Or dinner. Which was to say that she wasn’t suspicious of his absence at first. But it was highly unusual to not see him in the training room or the weapons room or anywhere else that included sharp objects and breaking things. She had a bad feeling when she went to his room, hoping desperately he hadn’t forgotten his promise to her. Hoping that he hadn’t found a way to go around it. His room was empty, but there was laughter and conversation coming from Clary’s room. Right across the hallway. Laughter couldn’t be a bad thing, could it?

She knocked, ripped the door open and stared. There was Jace, sitting on the bed, his face elated and carefree. And next to him was Clary, apparently feeding him m&m’s from the not so secret stash he had under his own bed. They looked like the last year of utter heartbreak had never happened, as if they could just go on from here.

„O my God, Clary“, she cried. „Everybody will be so happy!“

And everybody was.

- _The End_

_(March 2021)_


End file.
